Future U.S. leaders will face a very different world

Two Harrisburg- area high school students got a somber dose of international reality during their recent visit to Washington. By the time their generation takes charge, they learned, Americans might no longer be leading the world.

Ben Cohen, a junior at Harrisburg Academy, and Raven Harris, a senior at Milton Hershey School, got an immersion in world issues this summer in Washington, D.C.

President Barack Obama of the United States, center, is joined by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, from left, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, upper right, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during the official family photo at the G20 Summit Sunday, June 27, 2010, in Toronto. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

They brushed shoulders with European and Washington intellectual elites, met the president of the national World Affairs Council, and nibbled cheese and grapes at a reception only a stone’s throw from the White House.

They ended their trip pondering two important messages: American leadership is at risk. And much of the world just doesn’t think like us.

Cohen and Harris heard Europeans criticize American policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East as futile and misguided. And they discovered that Europeans are far less passionate about the things that inspire or inflame many Americans.

According to a new Gallup poll, when asked if there was anything in their lives they would die for, most Europeans couldn’t think of a single thing — not religion, not country, not even a good glass of wine. Of course, Americans could think of a lot of things to die for. We were second most eager to die for at least one thing, following only Palestinians, who came in first. Azerbaijanis came third.

According to Europeans, that’s a big problem. Americans are far too eager to die and to kill, they say, and they’re tired of going along to get along. They also think this attitude is increasing terrorism, not abating it. These revelations came at a forum sponsored by the New America Foundation to announce the Gallup poll highlighting sharp differences in American and European attitudes on war, security and trans-Atlantic relations. The poll offers a serious warning to Americans about the dependability of European allies in combating terrorism, especially with military means.

Robert Manchin, managing director of Gallup Europe, noted that Europeans and Americans share concerns about terrorism, with al-Qaida at the top of the list. But Manchin noted that Western Europeans disagree strongly with relying on military means to fight it. They are especially vexed about the war in Afghanistan, believing it is doing more harm than good.

“Europeans believe that the security of the West is not being upheld in Afghanistan,” Manchin said. “Europeans think Afghanistan actually makes them more vulnerable to terrorism.” Half of the Europeans polled said that U.S. and NATO troops should withdraw.

“Many Europeans also believe Europe needs a greater leadership role” in the world, Manchin said, and younger Europeans are far less inclined than their parents to follow U.S. leadership. That was not good news for our young leaders.

By the time they take over the reins of power, their peers in Europe are likely to be far less cooperative in going after dictators such as Saddam Hussein or hunting down Taliban in Afghanistan. Annette Heuser, executive director of Bertelsmann Foundation in Washington, was quite blunt.

“For the younger generation,” she said, “the U.S. is no longer a role model.”

Heuser, a German, heads a foundation with a mission to strengthen trans-Atlantic cooperation. She doesn’t like the tension in U.S.-European relations. But it is real. Europeans want to take a gentler approach to fighting terrorism, using the soft power of aid and development to transform societies.

“Europeans see our power in civilian support,” she said. “Americans ‘conquer and transfer.’”

Joyce Davis

But there was a chink in the European armor. Central Europeans — Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, etc. — aren’t in lock step with their Western European neighbors. Central Europeans welcome American leadership, said Anita Orban, senior adviser of the International Centre for Democratic Transition, which facilitates cooperation between the U.S. and Central Europe.

But even here there’s a catch. The Central Europeans don’t necessarily agree with American policies, she said. Their governments just want American protection in case Russia decides to invade again.

All of this gave our young internationalists a lot to contemplate. For better or worse, they know the world they take over could be even more unstable than ours. And this sort of bickering among trans-Atlantic friends will only abet our mutual destruction.

Joyce Davis is a veteran journalist and president of the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg.